Invest money in US infrastructure.

Anyone with two bits of wits knows that rail is the most energy efficient mass transport and if we wish to stave off total collapse it is probably the sharpest major investment to go for, and one of very few actually worth generating public debt to set up.

The saddest thing is how all the trolleys in America (particularly here in the Twin Cities) were destroyed by a GM / mobster kickback criminal conspiracy, replacing all the tracks with buses. If only about 15 major nodes had been preserved the entire metro would look different today - it spanned from Lake Minnetonka to Stillwater on the Wisconsin border.

On the other hand the guys who built the trolleys were developers not altruists! They would build a line from downtown into south Minneapolis, keep it under an independent company of its own, sell the parcels and run them at a loss. A key reason the system couldn't be sustained at its full size. Go Thomas Lowry :)

My grandfather was brought in to caretake the bus system after the criminals destroyed the trolleys, before Metro Transit it was Twin City Lines...
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Hongpong.com

Here's how bad it is, fractured priorities. But there's all that potential -- "opportunities to solve."

American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009 Infrastructure Report Card

Near as I can tell from the coverage, they transitioned to NADIN II in July.

"We've just about finished our transition from the legacy system over to the new system," FAA IT administrator Jim McNeill told eWEEK. "The main new system is for NADIN, built on Stratus Technology servers with virtualization, and handles all the legacy [mainframe] functions as well as new FAA-owned IP systems."

Not my field, but it sounds like it may well be spanky new infrastructure that rode it in.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

people are not going to flock to high-speed rail as an alternative to air travel for speedy arrival---Air will *always* have that win. High speed rail would be used more for those who don't like flying, for the spectacle ground travel affords, and for the capability of carrying luggage/loads too impractical for air (weight, bulk, non-perishable, etc).

Personally, the idea of a 3-day San Jose-Orlando run where I don't have to drive (save to and from the station) is attractive...depending on price. No worries about nodding off at the wheel, kids crying for potty break, opportunities for photography (depending on the route), and more...

-5.75,-4.05
"God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." -- Robin Williams

I've been able to experience both rail and flight today... I took Amtrak from DC to Baltimore, then hopped on a plane from there to Charlotte. I'm now sitting in Charlotte waiting to catch my final flight into Phoenix in about 1 1/2 hours.

Rail is so much nicer, albeit slower. I actually had leg room, was sitting in much wider seats, could fit my admittedly massive luggage onboard with no problems, could plug in my laptop, and could potentially chat on my cellphone. My flight into Charlotte was cramped, with my knees smashed right up against the seat in front of me, not enough room to open my laptop, a narrow seat that caused me to hunch forward so my wide shoulders don't smack into my fellow passengers, and there was quite a bit of turbulence--oh, and $20 to check my bag, a fee which hit me 3 times during this trip due to my schedule.

I would love to take high speed rail. I don't care if it still takes a bit longer. I've ridden rail from Providence to NYC a few times as well and its much better than travel by plane or bus.